Monday, December 12, 2011

Couple Blocked from Voter ID due to Birth Certificate Requirement.

Voting=Birth Certificate.

It's that easy...or hard, depending on whether you know where you stashed your rarely used birth certificate. And isn't that the issue? Who uses a birth certificate, ever? 

Besides, what's so important about a birth certificate, since conception made that piece of paper completely irrelevant?  Birthdays too? But that's another topic. 

State drivers licenses should also be enough to satisfy government officials, but even that isn't enough, as one couple found out below. 

From the Hudson Patch, this summary: 
Like many people, John Wolfe and Rita Platt of Osceola had the day off from work on Friday, Nov. 23. They decided to make the 45-minute trip to Hudson's Department of Motor Vehicles office to obtain their driver licenses or at least an ID card needed to vote in upcoming Wisconsin elections. They left with neither, according to blogger Heidi Herron

WI Voices blog post tells their story. Wolfe and Platt went to the DMV with the out-of-state driver licenses they have been using since moving to Wisconsin 18 months ago. The DMV clerk told them that a certified birth certificate or a passport was needed for identification purposes, and that a social security card or pay stub would not suffice. If that weren't frustrating enough, the DMV's computer system was down at the time, which further complicated the visit. 
Both Wolfe and Platt will have to pay fees to acquire certified copies of their birth certificates (Wolfe from Virginia; Platt from California). Then they will have to make another trip to the Hudson DMV to once again attempt to file their paperwork.
Besides doing away with the requirement, giving everyone a copy of their birth certificate in a one time mailing, pocket size, will solve this problem once and for all. Oh, and with a new governor or senator, we can finally revise the voter ID law...back the way it was.

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